Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
UPDATE 10/14/16: Use Extreme Caution purchasing from ScoreBig! In October 2016, ScoreBig encountered “an unexpected liquidity crisis” which lead to them ceasing operations temporarily. Their communication to buyers at that time indicated that “there may be an issue regarding the continued validity of the tickets you purchased”.
Editor’s Note: Anita began researching stacking opportunities with ScoreBig about a month ago. Since then, we learned that it is possible to both get a great price and earn amazing rewards when buying event tickets from ScoreBig. Whether you want to buy tickets for sports events, plays, or concerts, we (i.e. Anita) figured out how to save the most money and earn the most rewards in the process. Unfortunately, the details are extremely complicated. So, in this final post in the series, Anita has spelled out, step by step, how to do it…
-Frequent Miler (AKA Greg).
ScoreBig Extreme Stacking: How To
By Anita, Lab Manager
Event ticket seller ScoreBig offers rewards and bonuses through a variety of portals and partners, offering the tantalizing possibility of triple, quadruple, quintuple, or even sextuple reward stacking.
In the first three posts in the series, we’ve covered ScoreBig’s pricing options and interfaces, how to use the Name A Ticket Price option, and Extreme Stacking options.
Today we’re going to walk you through how to stack rewards with ScoreBig:
- Link a credit card to both Shop Your Way Rewards and Fuel Rewards Network.
- Shop for tickets
- Decide whether to use discount coupons or earn miles
- Prime the interface
- Find and use the best online portal
- Buy your tickets
- Pay with the credit card linked to Shop Your Way Rewards and Fuel Rewards Network (in Step 1)
Step 1: Link a credit card
Decide which Visa or MasterCard you’ll be using to pay for tickets. Next link your credit card to each of these:
If you have the Citi AT&T card, it should earn 3X points for online shopping (not yet confirmed). Also, many Citi ThankYou cards offer 2X for “entertainment”. There’s a good chance that those cards will earn 2X points for ScoreBig purchases.
Step 2: Shop for your tickets.
If Name A Ticket Price is available for your event in sections you’d be happy with, I highly recommend using that option. You’ll forgo frequent flyer miles, but you’ll probably find that you’ll save more than the miles would be worth.
For many higher priced tickets or for high demand events, Name A Ticket Price tickets aren’t available, so shop ScoreBig’s published prices. Price compare to SeatGeek. ScoreBig, like other resellers, has its share of atrociously overpriced tickets.
To shop published price tickets and see the airline rewards you can earn, use these links:
To shop Name A Ticket Price tickets, or for published price tickets with a coupon instead of miles, either open private browsing or incognito mode and go to ScoreBig.com, or go to this Ticketmaster page and click on the blue “Name A Ticket Price” link on the bottom left.
Note that the published prices may vary by about a dollar between the different versions of the interface.
Step 3: Decide whether to use a coupon or earn miles
Search online for the best available coupon. If you’re not a first time purchaser, test your coupon before you purchase, as many I found were only good for a first time purchase even though that did not appear in the terms and conditions.
If you’re buying published price tickets, decide if you want to use the coupon or earn miles. The current first time use bonuses from the airlines tip the scale in favor of miles, and you’re probably best off with miles for any very expensive purchase as the largest coupon I’ve seen is for $40 off $400.
If you’re bidding on Name a Ticket Price tickets, you’ll use a coupon since earning miles isn’t possible.
Step 4: Prime the interface
You’ve probably been price comparing on different versions of ScoreBig, and whatever version you used last will be the one that opens when you click through from a portal. (Probably. The many versions of the interface make this process unpredictable, and I’m not certain that the same action will always yield the same results.)
So before going to your cash back portal, open ScoreBig.com and make sure you see the version you want to use for purchasing.
- If you are using an airline partner link to shop for published price tickets and earn miles, you should see the airline logo in the top right corner.
- If you are using a coupon for either published or Name A Ticket Price tickets, you should see the Ticketmaster logo in the top right corner, except…
- If you accessed ScoreBig through private browsing or incognito mode, you will not see any logo in the top right corner.
If you don’t see the proper version of the interface, clear your browser history and click through the desired ScoreBig link again (found in step 2). That should do it… I hope. YMMV.
Step 5: Select the best portal option
Use Cash Back Monitor to find the best option. From your chosen cash back portal, navigate to ScoreBig.
If you primed the interface as described in Step 4, then when you click through to ScoreBig, you should find yourself in the version of ScoreBig you want (e.g. if you want to earn JetBlue miles and you primed the interface correctly, you should see a JetBlue logo when you click through to ScoreBig from a portal).
Step 6: Buy either Published Price or Name A Ticket Price Tickets
Published Price Tickets
Select your tickets and click Buy. On the Order Summary page, enter your frequent flier number. Review and Confirm.
Note that after your first purchase with an airline, your frequent flyer number will be linked to your ScoreBig account. Unfortunately, even though your frequent flyer number is linked to your account, this does not trigger miles earning when you go through non-partner ScoreBig links.
Name A Ticket Price Tickets
Select your tickets, submit your price, and enter mailing address. Enter coupon code on the billing page. Review and submit your bid.
Step 7: Pay with your linked credit card
Review step 1 in which you inked a credit card to both Shop Your Way Rewards and Fuel Rewards. That’s the credit card you should pay with.
Step 8: Enjoy!
Warning
As with most Extreme Stacking adventures, any or all of these rewards could fail to post or be clawed back. However, the risk is minimal if ScoreBig prices are fairly close to other resellers and you’d be buying tickets anyway.
 This post was written by Anita, FM Lab Manger. Anita actively researches new Extreme Stacking possibilities and maintains the Frequent Miler Laboratory page. |
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Looks like it worked, thanks!
Thanks for the post!
Have you ever seen this error before from SYWR when trying to link a card?
“We’re sorry, but something went wrong on our end. Please give us two hours and try again. Our apologies for any inconvenience.”
I was able to link other credit cards successfully, so I’m wondering if this is similar to the airlines’ dining program where you can’t link the same card to multiple programs. Problem is, I don’t know what other rewards program (if any) conflicts with SYWR. Do you happen to know?
I’ll try their customer service in any case.
Andy,
Were you able to get the card linked? I personally have had many different types trouble with both SYWR and Sears.com over the years in linking cards, getting repeatedly locked out of my Sears account, my account being unable to use valid coupon codes, being unable to place an order without repeated error messages, and so on. I think their IT isn’t completely up to date with the times 🙂
That said, I had no difficulty when I linked the same card to Fuel Rewards and SYW for this experiment. I fully expected to get one of those emails like you get from the dining program saying that a previously linked card had been removed, but I didn’t get it and I did get rewards from both multiple times. These programs do not appear to conflict. I believe that Fuel Rewards also has a dining program, so if the card you’ve linked to FR and to SYW had previously been linked with a airline dining, I would expect the card would be unlinked from that dining program.
Anita
Anita,
I checked all of my airline dining rewards accounts just in case, but I didn’t see the card on any of them. So there’s no reason I can think of why they shouldn’t let me add this particular card to SYWR.
Anyway, still trying to get CS to help. I’ll post back if I get any useful information.
Andy
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Nice.
Thank you!
So you can use both the SW portal and a cashback portal. I haven’t been able to do that in the past, and I was confused from the above as to how exactly that is done–can you explain that sequence again as to how to get both to credit one’s account.
Cory,
I’m sorry it is confusing!
First, to clarify, you can only earn cashback and miles for published price tickets. (If you’re bidding on Name A Ticket Price, you cannot earn airline miles).
For published price tickets, the way to earn both cash back and miles is that you use the cash back PORTAL (not the Southwest portal) and navigate to the Southwest branded version of the ScoreBig interface.
If you’re on the Southwest version of the interface, you’ll see the Southwest logo in the top right corner, and you’ll be prompted to enter your FF number at check-out.
Please let me know if this helps.
Anita
Thank you Anita for all of your hard work!
I apologize , but I am still confused, can you explain a bit further?
So in the explanation above to Cory, if I wanted to buy published ticket prices, and use the TopCashback portal (for example) to go to scorebig– how am I to navigate to the southwest version of the scorebig interface. (if I already navigated through topcashback). Hopefully my question makes sense.
Thank you again Anita. I have learned so much from you!
Corinne,
Thanks for the question. It makes perfect sense, and I’m sorry it has been hard for me to explain clearly.
I recommend that you first “prime” the proper version of the interface by following the Southwest link provided in the blog post. You should see the ScoreBig page which has the Southwest logo in the top right hand corner.
Once “primed”, you should see this version every time you navigate to ScoreBig whether you go directly to ScoreBig.com or via the portal.
Please try this and let me know if it works. It worked on all computers in my house but all are Macs using Safari, and there is the possibility that it will not function this way for other setups.
Anita
Thank you Anita for the further explanation. That makes sense! I will follow your suggestions.
Am I to correctly understand that I will never be allowed to see the location of the seats until after I have paid ??
That’s correct. If you buy published price tickets, you’ll know section and row but not seat number. If buying Name A Ticket Price tickets, you’ll know within a defined set of sections where the tickets will be. You can come up with a reasonable guess which seats you are bidding on by checking ScoreBig’s inventory at SeatGeek, but it is not a sure thing.